Excerpt: Hands of Fate

Matthew Steele walked out into the cold air with a swagger in his step worthy of James Bond’s biggest nemesis. Sitting in the deepest, darkest corner of the lot was the ebony 1967 mustang that people called Black Beauty. Cloaked in shadow and barely visible in the unlit lot she waited like a coiled snake.
Steele slid into the soft leather seat with a weary sigh and settled for a moment, basking in the silent, cold night before bringing the car to life. Beauty growled and purred like a hungry beast and he smiled, listening to the symphony of it for a moment. He put the top down and slid into the deep black night.
He waited a moment to watch the other figures flit from shadow-to-shadow, but he could pick out each one. He knew who all of them were, and none of them were now on his list. Unfortunately, the one man he wanted was not there. The one man he had hoped to catch with this gambit had declined to show.
He turned beauty towards the city, and drove. It had been a long time since he had been home, not since he had left in 1983 had he been back. Now he just had to find his brother, and the men sent to kill him.
Even out here, in nowhere, the few who knew him called him “Mr Steele,” with a tone of fear and respect worthy of a czar or a prince. Others, those now too afraid to even call him that, had other names for him, Death in Armani, Death’s right Hand, The Executioner, but most knew him on sight. That was something else he had to get used to. The abject terror when people recognized him for what he was.
He took his foot off the gas pedal and coasted to a stop at the ridge that led into town. He’d been gone a long time, but now, he was back, and it had been far too long. There had been no active Avatar in Seaview since the coup in ’83 that boiled over into a city-wide civil war. It took everything they had to keep it out of the news media. He couldn’t afford to let that happen, not again.